July 5, 2017

Recently there has been a rash of lawsuits targeting University retirement plans. Many of these were coordinated and announced at the same time. The issues are pretty common across all cases:

Not evaluating recordkeeping fees,

Using mutliple custodians thus eliminating the ability to leverage economies of scale,

Retention of historically poor investment options,

Not conducting a competitive bidding process.

While the suits are in progress, these failures by well regarded institutions of higher learning can be informative. It is up to every plan sponsor to have a well documented prudent process for evaluation of investments, fees, & services. Trucker Huss has put together a well detailed piece here: